Monday, June 15, 2020

Arcade Dream

I'm at an old 1980s video arcade with a friend who eagerly tells me about the new Bill and Ted video game.  "I know a trick to get extra lives - you just need to hold down buttons while restarting the machine" I'm sent around back to flick the switch, but when I look up, I can't restart the machine because Keanu Reeves himself is playing the game surrounded by cheering fans, and he's serious - he really wants to win it.  It wouldn't be fair to reboot the machine now.

I look over and there's an educational kiosk with a touch screen.  It is playing an interactive CD Rom documentary about "The US Mail Camel Service" - something in the 1920s where every state had an honorary mail camel, with mail bags slung across its back, and a jaunty cap.

Touch on a state on a map, and a grainy photo appears of that state's mail camel with a brief biography and an 8 bit rendering of that state's unique "Mail Camel Song" that kids learned in school.

Later, I've tracked down what appears to be the "Retirement home" for the last surviving Mail Camels.  It's in the back yard of a house in Duluth.  It's a cold day with snow on the ground,  I can see the camels in a pen around the back and head back to see them.  As I approach, I realize that the camels are actually just cut outs - FAKES - and I look down to see I've walked into a field of poisonous snakes.  I'm know I'm doomed as they coil around my feet, and I wake up.

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